Efficient, effective societies require capabilities enabling their inhabitants to control the nature and consequences of their participation in interactions. Every community needs certain basic services, facilities and installations:                the post office delivers our mail,        the schools teach our children,        the highway department keeps our roads passable and in good repair,        the fire department puts out fires,        the power company delivers electrical power to our homes,        the telephone company connects people and electronic devices near and far and provides directory services when you don't know the right number,        banks keep our money safe,        cable TV and radio stations deliver news and entertainment programming to our homes.        police keep order,        the sanitation department collects refuse, and        social services support societal policies for the needy.        
These and other important “behind the scenes” administrative and support services provide an underlying base or foundation that makes the conveniences and necessities of modern life as we know it possible and efficient, and allow the wheels of commerce to spin smoothly.
Suppose you want to buy bread at the local bakery. The baker doesn't have to do everything involved in making the bread because he can rely on support and administration services the community provides. For example:                The baker doesn't need to grow or mill grain to make flour for the bread. Instead, he can purchase flour from a supplier that delivers it by truck.        Similarly, the baker doesn't need to grow or produce fuel to keep its ovens hot; that fuel can be delivered in pipes or tanks by people who specialize in producing and supplying fuel.        You can also have confidence in the cleanliness of the local bakery because it displays an inspection notice certifying that it has been inspected by the local health department.        
Support and administrative services are also very important to ensure that people are compensated for their efforts. For example:                You and the bakery can safely trust the government to stand behind the currency you take out of your wallet or purse to pay for the bread.        If you pay by check, the banking system debits the amount of your check from your bank account overnight and gives the bakery the money.        If you and the bakery use different banks, your check may be handled by an automated “clearinghouse” system that allows different banks to exchange checks and settle accounts—efficiently transferring money between the banks and returning checks drawn on accounts that don't have enough money in them.        If the bakery accepts credit cards as payment, the flexibility of payment methods accepted in exchange for the bakery products is increased and provides increased convenience and purchasing power to its customers.        
Such support and administrative services provide great economies in terms of scale and scope—making our economy much more efficient. For example, these important support and administrative services allow the baker to concentrate on what he knows how to do best—make and bake bread. It is much more efficient for a bakery and its experienced bakers to make many loaves of bread in its large commercial ovens than it is for individual families to each bake individual loaves in their own home ovens, or for the growers of grain to also bake the bread and pump the fuel needed for baking and accept barter, for example, chickens in exchange for the bread. As a result, you and the bakery can complete your purchasing transaction with a credit card because both you and the bakery have confidence that such a payment system works well and can be trusted to “automatically” function as a highly efficient and convenient basis for non-cash transactions.
The Electronic Community Needs Administrative and Support Services
There is now a worldwide electronic community. Electronic community participants need the ability to shape, control, and, in an electronic world, automate, their interactions. They badly need reliable, secure, trusted support and administrative services.
More and more of the world's commerce is being carried on electronically. The Internet—a massive electronic network of networks that connects millions of computers worldwide—is being used increasingly as the vehicle for commerce transactions. Fueled largely by easy-to-use interfaces (e.g., those allowing customers to “point and click” on items to initiate purchase and then to complete a simple form to convey credit card information), the Internet is rapidly becoming a focal point for consumer and business to business purchases. It is also becoming a significant “channel” for the sale and distribution of all kinds of electronic properties and services, including information, software, games, and entertainment.
At the same time, large companies use both private and public data networks to connect with their suppliers and customers. Driven by apparently inexorable declines in the cost of both computing power and network capacity, electronic commerce will increase in importance as the world becomes more and more computerized. This new electronic community—with its widespread electronic commerce—is generating great new demands for electronic administrative, support and “clearing” services.
The electronic community badly needs a foundation that will support both commercial and personal electronic interactions and relationships. Electronic commerce on any significant scale will require a dependable, efficient, scaleable, and secure network of third party support and administrative service providers and mechanisms to facilitate important parts of the transaction process. For example:                People who provide value to the electronic community require seamless and efficient mechanisms allowing them to be compensated for the value they provide.        Providers who sell goods or services to the electronic community need reliable, efficient electronic payment mechanisms to service themselves and other value chain participants.        Purchasers in the electronic marketplace, while often unaware of the behind-the-scenes intricacies of payment transaction activity, nonetheless require easy to use, efficient and flexible interfaces to payment mechanisms and financial obligation fulfillment systems.        Rights holders in all types of electronic “content” (for example, analog or digital information representing text, graphics, movies, animation, images, video, digital linear motion pictures, sound and sound recordings, still images, software computer programs, data), and to many types of electronic control processes, require secure, flexible and widely interoperable mechanisms for managing their rights and administering their business models, including collecting, when desired, payments and relevant usage information for various uses of their content.        All parties require infrastructure support services that remain dependable, trusted, and secure even as the volume of commerce transactions increases substantially.        
An important cornerstone of successful electronic transaction management and commerce is therefore the development and operation of a set of administrative and support services that support these objectives and facilitate the emergence of more diverse, flexible, scaleable, and efficient business models for electronic commerce generally.
The Ginter Patent Specification Describes a Comprehensive Solution
The above-referenced Ginter, et al. patent specification describes technology providing unique, powerful capabilities instrumental to the development of secure, distributed transaction-based electronic commerce and rights management. This technology can enable many important, new business models and business practices on the part of electronic commerce participants while also supporting existing business models and practices.
The Ginter et al. specification describes comprehensive overall systems and wide arrays of methods, techniques, structures and arrangements that enable secure, efficient distributed electronic commerce and rights management on the Internet (and Intranets), within companies large and small, in the living room, and in the home office. Such techniques, systems and arrangements bring about an unparalleled degree of security, reliability, efficiency and flexibility to electronic commerce and electronic rights management.
The Ginter, et al. patent specification also describes an “Information Utility”—a network of support and administrative services, facilities and installations that grease the wheels of electronic commerce and support electronic transactions in this new electronic community. For example, Ginter, et al. details a wide array of support and administrative service providers for interfacing with and supporting a secure “Virtual Distribution Environment.” These support and administrative service providers include:                transaction processors,        usage analysts,        report receivers,        report creators,        system administrators,        permissioning agents,        certification authority        content and message repositories,        financial clearinghouses,        consumer/author registration systems,        template libraries,        control structure libraries,        disbursement systems,        electronic funds transfer, credit card, paper billing systems, and        receipt, response, transaction and analysis audit systems.The Present Inventions Build on and Extend the Solutions Described in the Ginter Patent Specification        
The present inventions build on the fundamental concepts described in the Ginter, et al. patent specification while extending those inventions to provide further increases in efficiency, flexibility and capability. They provide an overlay of distributed electronic administrative and support services (the “Distributed Commerce Utility”). They can, in their preferred embodiments, use and take advantage of the “Virtual Distribution Environment” (and other capabilities described in the Ginter et al patent specification and may be layered on top of and expand on those capabilities.